The need to move woke Lexi up before dawn.  Again.  Her eyes opened to find her room tinted with the faint, dark blue light of early morning.  Blue air, black-blue sky.   Blue world.  It was a good time of day for motion.  She and Ren had always liked leaving on road trips when the world was blue.

She didn't run this morning, though.  Not every morning was for madcap dashing about.  Lexi slipped out of bed (she was wearing naught but sweat pants that had "TEXAS" printed down one leg in red.  They had been Ren's, and as far as Lexi knew, he didn't really like Texas that much.) and went downstairs, enjoying the blueness of her house and the cool morning air the whole way.  Malice followed her, a punctuation to her passing.

Ian was snoring in the TV room, and Teague was snoring in the second wingback chair, which had been in the library and was now in the ballroom, dragged in there for some forgotten reason.  Lexi woke neither of the snorers on her way to the kitchen.  She tore a fist-sized hunk off of the bread she'd baked two days ago to nibble on, and kept going.  The first floor of her house made a perfect place to run laps.  She'd gotten up and run pell-mell through it enough times that she could walk it blindfolded.  Maybe.

Probably.

It was worth an experiment.  Lexi closed her eyes and walked slowly through the kitchen, picturing the walls and appliances and counter around her.  When instinct told her that it was time to turn left, she did.  That put the back hallway in front of her, with its warped floor and little bathroom currently stuffed full of junk.  She walked until the floor changed pattern again--now she was in the turret room.  Lexi turned left again.  Ian's snoring had gotten louder; she was in the TV room, of course.  Straight across (kicking a stray pillow along the way) and then she was in the library.

In the library she stubbed her toe on the engine stand, which was about five feet farther north than she remembered.  Lexi let out a yip of pain and surprise and opened her eyes, game forgotten.

Ian's snoring stopped.  "Lex?" he called tentatively.

The blue was beginning to fade rapidly toward dawn, and Lexi could see Ian sitting up on his air mattress, looking at her.  He looked away quickly.

"Put a shirt on, Lexi," he said with a healthy dose of exasperation.  "Please."

"Aye-aye, keptin," she replied, and went upstairs to do so.  Not being able to walk through the house half-naked was but one of the things that was no fun about having guests.

By the time Lexi got back upstairs (Malice was off on some other cat business by this time) she was getting dozy again.  She dawdled over picking a shirt, then finally threw herself back into bed without bothering.  She lay on the edge of sleep, listening to the house.  She heard Ian start snoring again.  The TV room was almost directly beneath hers, so that was no surprise.  There was another sound, too, but she couldn't quite place it.  "As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door," she whispered.

It was the front door, actually.  Lexi sat up and listened again.  Yes, it was the front door.  She squirmed quickly into a shirt (an elderly flannel, also one of Ren's) and flitted downstairs.  When she opened the door, she found a very cold-looking Glen Grant there in a coat that wasn't nearly thick enough for the weather and a cheerful yellow and blue snow cone hat.  He had managed not to wake Ian up somehow.  She didn't mind though; Ian could sleep all day if he wanted to.

Lexi smiled.  "Are you Lenore?" she asked.

"Sorry if I woke you," he said.

"Pish, I was already awake, Mr. Glen Grant.  Step into my parlor.  Perch on a bust of Pallas, if you will," she said, urging him inside.  "Actually, I don't have a parlor.  Which might be hard to believe, if you consider how many rooms I do have here, but it's true.  No parlor.  Not a one.  So what did you run the Porsche into?"

He smiled, embarrassed.  "Is it that obvious?  It wasn't too far from here."  He shrugged his coat off at Lexi's urging, and rubbed his hands vigorously.  She went toward the kitchen, and he followed her, thinking about the last time he'd been there.  The house seemed different in the daylight.  Lexi seemed to be the only thing alive in it; everything else was shades of grey.  Strange that he hadn't noticed before.  The house seemed...he wanted to say angry, but that wasn't quite right.  "The roads aren't that bad, actually.  But there was a sheep--"

Lexi interrupted him with a peal of laughter.  "I know that sheep!  It's a hobby of hers, crashing cars.  Did you hit her?"

"No, but dodging her put me off the road."

"Yes, sir, that's her game.  But it's good you didn't hit her, she's a friend of a friend.  Ren and I hit one, once.  During a rally in New Zealand.  We came over a hill at about a hundred and forty kph, and there it was in the middle of the road, munching and lost in some sheep thought.  We were actually airborne, so Ren couldn't even steer.  We both yelled at the same time, and then blam!  Sheep bisque.  We had to replace the whole front end of the car, and pay for the sheep too.  We were still finding bits of bloody wool on the undercarriage six months later.  D'you want some hot chocolate?"

Glen made a face of disgust, still smiling.  "Not any more."

"Squeam," she chided.  "Bread and jam, then?  Cheesecake?  You nibble on something, and then we'll go and get a truck to drag your car out."

"Why don't we go and get it now?"  Glen was surprised by how badly he wanted to get out of the house, suddenly.  Brooding, that's how the house felt.  It was incredibly unsettling.  Even Lexi's cheerful mood didn't offset the feeling of foreboding he'd had ever since entering the house.  "Might as well get it over with before I warm up and get comfortable."

"Okee," she replied.  Lexi fished in the fruit bowl for some car keys.  There was no fruit in the bowl, incidentally, just pencils, car keys, and Post-It notes.  Speaking of which...Lexi used a couple of them to leave a note for Ian or whoever woke up next.  "We'll take Mister Doctor Edward's Town Car and go fetch Furious, how's that sound?"  She was on her way to the door.  At the front door, she stopped to slip her feet (sockless) into a pair of boots.

Glen looked at the mess in the library.  "Are you building a new Crane-Packard?" he asked.

"Actually, it's building itself.  I'm just providing hands.  It's for Ren."

"They were wonderful cars," Glen replied.  "I'm happy to see as many of them running around as possible.  Is it going to be an S1 or an S2?"

"A whuh?  What are you talking about, silly person?"

"Which body style?  Coupe or convertible?"

"Oh, it'll be a droptop.  Ren liked them better.  But whither the S1, S2 silliness?"

"That's not the proper model designation?" he asked, surprised.  "Jon and Peter at Auto History Guide just added the CP to their latest collector's guide, and they use those to differentiate."

He expected her to ask how much the AHG had said her cars were worth, but she didn't.  "That's just silly," Lexi said.  "There were no model designations.  They all had names."

"You mean, individually?  I think I remember Ren mentioning that to someone."

"Of course, individually!"  She unlocked the doors for him, and soon the Town Car was gliding across the snow as if it wasn't even there.  Lexi seemed to pay only incidental attention to the treacherous roads, but the Lincoln never put a wheel wrong.  She seemed to be having an easier time with the rear-wheel-drive sedan than he had in a four-wheel drive Porsche.  "How else are you going to name them?  Are you taking notes now?  I think we told someone what their names were, but they must not have been paying attention.  Okay, write this down, and make sure you tell the AHG too:  the first one was Lord Vader, it was a charcoal grey convertible.  No, wait.  Technically the first one was a Volvo named Rotaregirfer, it was a 740 wagon with a Crane-Packard engine.  Test toy.  Lots of fun for hassling hot rods."

"Did you tweak the suspension, too?"

"Of course.  But I'll show it to you later.  The next CP was Carousel, the white and green and red convertible.  Then we did two hardtops, Spiraltwist and Lemontwist, and then two more convertibles named Solar Sigh--that was the orange one that got wrecked in the crash--and Deadsy."  She was surprised to find that thinking of the crash didn't make the world fall out from under her this time.

"Where did you get the names from?"

"Mostly the tops of our heads, or out of songs.  Where was I?  Oh, right, there were three coupes in a row after that.  Edgewise, Snowsnow, and Night Shift.  Then we built Red Over Black and Mirage II, with the crazy race suspensions.  And then last were two more convertibles, King Salamander and Shylock, which was black and white and named after a deceased cat of mine, for the record."

"That's great," Glen said with a grin.  "Why Mirage II?"

"The first Mirage was that Porsche I almost got killed in, on that hillclimb.  We wanted something to remember it by.  And, we've got a sick sense of humor.  We did the first eleven together, just the two of us.  After that the production line was running, such as it was, and so the rest got built with the help of the Skeleton Crew, which is what we called everyone who pitched in building cars."  She told him the names of those Crane-Packards as well.  Remembering was easy, and it felt good.

Glen nodded.  "So what's the new one's name?"

"You never know until you drive them," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"So there are lots of rumors about what's going to happen next."

"That's just silly.  I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next.  What are they saying?"

"I heard that Nissan is going to buy the Crane-Packard V8 for use in a special-edition Skyline, for starters."

Lexi actually laughed.  "Someone better give me a call then, because all of the blocks and castings are in my basement.  We had to stop building at twenty-four partly because everything but the bodies in white got shipped to our house instead of the factory, you know.  We didn't have a truck big enough to shift all of it, so we took enough to do twenty-four down in the back of Deus and that had to be it."

"I did not know that."

"Most folks don't.  People should talk to me more.  Tell me some more funny stories."

"Well, let's see.  I've heard that there will be another production run, but of course that's not true with the company shuttered.  Two people emailed that they heard you'd be going into mass production in Ile du Soleil though.  I've heard that BMW is making a deal to buy the rest of the bodies and install M-spec straight sixes."

"They don't even look like BMWs."  Lexi rolled her eyes.

"I know," Glen said.  "How about the one where you go to work at Ford's Special Vehicle Team?"

"I got a job?  How cool is that?  What are they paying me?  What will I do?"

"No idea.  If it's as true as the one that Ford will be buying up all of the Crane-Packard body dies and the Crane-Packard name, and the one that the Crane-Packard V8 will be used in Formula One, though, you'll be pretty busy."

"People do talk about our car a lot," Lexi said.

"And you, as well.  There are a lot of people saying that Toyota actually stole the plans for your engine for their own 4.7 liter V8, and that you're suing them to get everything back."

"Oh, that's just terrible.  Maybe I should do some corporate espionage--it sounds like fun.  Warehouse is right up here," she added.

Glen recognized the place from the auction.  He thought about what Curve had said, and wondered if she'd bought new cars or what.  The warehouse they were pulling up in front of had been empty a month ago.

At Lexi's request, Glen got out of the car, opened the door to the storage area, and flipped a light switch inside, and Lexi drove into an empty warehouse.

The awful ugly reality of it took several seconds to strike her fully.  At first she was convinced that she'd somehow come to the wrong place, and opened the wrong door, because there should have been cars parked along both sides, tucked up tight against the walls with only a narrow aisle to drive down.  This warehouse was empty, nothing but buzzing fluorescent lights, some scraps of paper, a folding table and a concrete floor.  That wasn't right.  That wasn't right at all.  The Town Car's engine echoed slightly on the bare walls.

Glen hit the switch to close the door behind them, to keep the cold out, and ducked in under the door as it clanked down.  It was a bit warmer inside, out of the wind.  Lexi got out of the Town Car and took a few steps away from it.  She forgot to shut it off; Glen started to do so, but stopped partway there as he realized that something was very wrong with Lexi.  Her good mood was gone.  She was walking in little circles, turning around as if she expected the room to change behind her as she went, and staring in gape-mouthed shock around her.

"Where?  Where is everything?" she asked in a confused little voice.  "This isn't right.  Where is everything?"

She didn't know?  Glen frowned.  Had she forgotten thanks to being drugged, or had she never known?  He couldn't tell.  In any case, she had found a discarded auction flyer that was lying on the floor.

As she read it, Glen felt that pensive, brooding feeling he'd noticed at the house creeping into the cool, empty warehouse as well.  The confusion on Lexi's face was slowly replaced by tension.  He chose not to speak, or move.  If she was just now finding out that the two hundred cars Ren and she had collected had been sold off--and it looked like she was--it was probably a good idea to stand back.  Glen thought about how he'd feel if someone sold his Austin-Healey out from under him, multiplied that potential rage by two hundred, and then decided to take another step back.

Lexi sat on the floor, looking at the flyer in her hands.  Her face had gone pale. 

"I, um..."  Glen couldn't think of anything else to say, so he climbed back into the passenger seat of the Town Car, where it was a bit warmer.  Lexi sat without moving for ten minutes, fifteen.  Glen thought about Dobie Cassarell's doubts of whether Lexi was really a car person or not, and figured the fugue state she'd just dropped into was proof enough that she was.  The idea of nominating her for Road Associates membership crossed his mind, more seriously this time.

He watched her through the windshield until she suddenly bolted to her feet and ran for the door.  Glen got out of the car, then heard a second engine outside.  Someone else had pulled up.  Lexi rushed through the people door next to the garage door and out to meet whoever it was.